Bioreactors of the above mentioned type are for example manufactured by GE Healthcare, Uppsala, Sweden under the trade name WAVE Bioreactor™ in several variants for different sizes of reactor bags. Other bioreactors of this type are also known. In reactors of this type, bags containing cell culture medium is placed on a tray which in turn is attached to a rocking device. The rocking motion of this device induces waves in the cell culture medium. These waves provide mixing and oxygen transfer, resulting in a perfect environment for cell growth.
The bags are clamped at two ends to the tray which for this purpose contains clamping devices. Bioreactors of moderate sizes are often placed on benches in laboratories and the like. If the bench is not accessible from two sides, the person who is to take off a used bag or placing a new bag on the tray must then lean over the bioreactor to reach the clamp on one side of the tray. Such leaning is not suitable from an ergonomic point of view and for shorter persons it can even be hard to reach the clamp in question.
Depending on the size of the bag or bags to be placed on a tray, different sizes of trays are used in the same bioreactor. For a bench placed bioreactor the means for fixing the tray to the rocking device are on one side hidden from view by the tray itself which makes the changing of trays troublesome and time consuming. Furthermore, the lifting off a tray from the rocking device and the placing of a new tray onto the rocking device can not be performed in suitable way from an ergonomic point of view.
WO 00/66706 discloses a bioreactor of the above mentioned type, in which the tray can be swung up to a vertical position around a centre axis in order to obtain stratification of the mixture in the reactor vessel.
The objective of the present invention is to improve bioreactors of the above mentioned type so that application and changes of plastic bags and the removal and application of trays can be performed in a better way from an ergonomic point of view.